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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

GoingGreen 2011: 9 Leading Companies

At the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference yesterday, a number of companies pitched new technologies to, among other things, improve energy use within data centers, manufacture new building materials, and support biofuel and solar energy.

AlwaysOn named C3 “Company of the Year.” The enterprise software company monitors, mitigates, and monetizes a company’s energy emissions. Co-founder Pat House said it allows organizations to reduce their energy consumption while increasing their profitability. The three-year-old company, founded by Tom Siebel, has alliances with many large service providers and consultants.

1E North America has an IT efficiency solution that saves companies millions, even tens of millions, of dollars by running its software, which identifies waste in IT usage. In a typical data center, 15 percent of servers are useless, said President Nick Milne-Home. Fifty percent of PCs are left on overnight, wasting $2.8 billion a year in the U.S. alone. The company has a number of different products to address these waste issues and others, like automating Windows 7 migration. The company has 16 million licenses over 1,400 customers in 42 countries. It has saved customers, like Dell and Verizon, over $1 billion in IT costs, half in energy costs.

PowerAssure’s director of technical marketing, Emre Kulali, talked about its EM/4 platform, which offers software-as-a-service. It monitors the data center, collects accurate real-time information, examines analytics to understand outages, and uses automation to mitigate problems. The big difference between PowerAssure and other system management systems like IBM Tivoli seems to be that it also integrates with power systems. Kulali said this could also increase energy efficiency.

Marcie Black, co-founder and chief technology officer of Bandgap Engineering, spoke to the need of reducing the cost of solar energy. It would require lowering the production cost of solar cells or increasing the efficiency of those cells. The company has a “silicon nanowire” photovoltaic plan, which uses nanowires on top of silicon to get higher efficiency at lower cost. The first phase involves nanowires on traditional solar cells; the nanowires allow for reduced reflection and higher absorption of the light. The second phase moves this to thin-film silicon, allowing more flexibility. (Black held up an example from Astrowatt.)

Sierra Energy’s Mike Hart talked about gasification, a new process of converting waste to energy. It uses a “FastOxGasifier,” based on a modified blast furnace. Basically, it creates synthetic gas from waste and oxygen, which can later be converted to ethanol or diesel, and recovers metals and other objects. The process is simple, scalable, and flexible with a massive potential market, Hart said. Sierra Energy hopes to build its first commercial facility in Sacramento next year.

Biowave Industries made a two rotor machine from stainless steel that makes a subsonic wave to create higher yield for fruits and vegetables, with more nutrients and fewer pests. Currently, founder and CEO Henry Adams said the company, which only started selling products this past year, is selling to hydroponics and greenhouses. It plans to extend to traditional agriculture in part through licensing deals. Biowave is focusing on “the food problem,” said Adams, noting that agriculture has to double its output in the next 30 years, with less land and an uncertain climate.

Stramit converts agricultural waste into building board. Its product, called StrawBoard, is based on straw, which lends strength and good acoustic properties, and has been U.S. certified for fire, insects, and strength. CEO Rory Faber talked about using it for the interior of multi-family housing, pre-fabricated housing, and industrial and commercial applications. Aimed mostly at China, India, and other emerging markets, the plan is to roll it out in Liaoning province, and then expand to the rest of China.

Bellwether Materialsuses coarse sheep’s wool, which is unsuitable for clothing and would otherwise be waste, as insulation. Founder Priscilla Burgess said this is the safest and greenest insulation because the fiberglass and cotton alternatives both have high energy costs. Not to mention, cotton is difficult to install and fiberglass is dangerous. Green insulation could seize a large part of the $4 billion insulation market.

Martin Pierce, chairman of the International Self-Powered Building Council, promoted the concept of self-powered buildings. He addressed the four major parts: an “energy shell,” in which the shell of the building actually generates energy; energy control; energy storage; and anti-germ coatings. Pierce cited Rainbow Solar Inc.’s photovoltaic windows, a “control core” with controls based on technology from ControlNet International, and an anti-germ anti-VOC nanocoating from XTi02.

ISPBC is a non-profit with over 1,000 members. More than 400 self-powered buildings (SPBs) are currently under construction, including a Bali hotel and a larger Malaysian project. To get bigger, Pierce said, requires companies to get comfortable with the concept of the SPB as a bankable, insurable asset.

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